Instagram Threads & the TikTok Quadrant

Over the last week, I’ve been trying to make sense of Instagram Threads, and what's the play here ?

At first impressions, it looks like a clone of Twitter, but let’s peel the onion further.

And to do that it makes sense to think through this with the lens of a framework. But we are getting ahead of ourselves, let’s understand the landscape of social media & its evolution.

Evolution of Social Platforms & Consumption

First Wave (Blogs / Publications etc.)

In the first wave of social media, you created content and acquired followers. And those followers consumed your content in chronological order. Newer content was seen first, and older content later.

In essence, you needed to follow accounts to get access to their content. And that content was served to you in chronological order.

Second Wave (Twitter)

This was the initiation of democratising content creation. Regular folks without tech chops could create content and share it with the world. This turbo-charged content creation, essentially everyone could become a blogger albeit a micro-blogger.

However, the method of delivery/consumption largely remained the same.

You follow accounts >> get access to their content >> content served in chronological order.

Even though it was launched a little after Facebook it squarely followed a chronological not an algorithmically optimised feed.

Third Wave (Facebook)

Facebook was the first to rethink how content should be served to users. Their model was hinged upon- A given user follows a bunch of different accounts, but not all the content created by those accounts is of equal weightage, hence to drive engagement it makes sense to show users content by what has a higher probability of engagement.

This gave birth to the algorithmic feed.

However, Facebook algorithmically only sorted content created by people you follow & not the entire repository of content on Facebook.

Fourth Wave (TikTok Effect)

This is the wave that’s playing out currently.

TikTok is similar to Facebook’s algorithmic feed but on steroids.

They took an approach, where they said “the most engaging content for you, may not be created by the network you follow/ or your friends list”. Hence, they built an algorithm that would sort through their entire library of content and serve content that is the most engaging for you.

Facebook had a repository of 1000 posts from your friends to sort through to show you the most relevant content. But TikTok had it’s entire library of millions of post to find you content that will engage you. Therefore the odds are that TikTok’s feed will be more engaging.

Obvious in hindsight, but genius when they thought of it.

It was probably inspired by how Facebook’s ad algorithm worked. User’s didn’t follow ad accounts.

The Framework & the TikTok Quadrant :

With this context in place, it makes sense to define the framework.

TikTok Quadrant :

Using an algorithmic feed you suggest content from your entire content library . Hence not restricting users to posts created by people they follow but rather exposing them to the entire library of content. The hottest quadrant right now.

Facebook Quadrant :

Using an algorithmic feed to show content to users. But the content library is restricted to people you know and have explicitly followed. Thereby limiting the content you can potentially serve to users.

Twitter Quadrant :

Recommends content from people you know but without an algorithm to optimise for engagement.

Hackernews Quadrant :

Chronologically shows you content from across the web irrespective of whether you follow those people or not.

The Great move to the TikTok Quadrant:

Once social media companies noticed the TikTok Quadrant, the default answer for them became “how do we move our company to the TikTok quadrant. “

And all incumbent social companies attempted to go in that direction. Whether it was Facebook or Instagram.

Twitter was late to the party. And Elon Musk’s wisdom led him to believe that moving to the TikTok quadrant would be the panacea to all of Twitter’s problems.

Moving to the TikTok quadrant for incumbent social networks is extremely hard if not impossible.

Instagram’s success in the TikTok Quadrant

The only existing platform that succeeded was Instagram, but they couldn’t do it with their entire product, but only with a new product they introduced into their ecosystem (Reels).

Reels clearly operates within the TikTok quadrant (where you see content from accounts you haven’t followed) and has tasted incredible success.

But the rest of the Instagram product (Feed & Stories) isn’t in the TikTok quadrant because you still almost exclusively see content from people you’ve followed.

Twitter’s failing attempt at moving to the TikTok Quadrant :

Not just Twitter but most existing social platforms have struggled/failed to successfully move to the TikTok Quadrant.

When social platforms started out, they acquired their Billion sized user base on a simple premise:

• Facebook: Get updates from people you know in real life (friends, classmates etc.)
• Twitter : Get updates from people you follow. (celebrities, politicians etc.).
• LinkedIn : Get professional updates from people you professionally know.

Therefore for all these social platforms you were shown content from people you opted to follow or knew in real life. For them to switch to showing you content from random strangers, kills the core reason why you joined and used the platform in the first place.

The new Twitter under Musk captures this conundrum the best. I’ve been an active user of Twitter since 2008, and my feed was built around people I consciously followed and that consistently delivered fresh high-quality content to me. But today most of my feed is populated with “Why am I not using Chat GPT effectively, 10 prompts to get the most out of ChatGPT”.

Ben Thompson from Stratecherry captures this the best :

“It’s as if neighbours of years moved out from my block overnight, replaced by strangers who all came knocking on my front door carrying not a casserole but a tweetstorm about how to tune my ChatGPT and MidJourney prompts. This is how Twitter has changed. “

Today almost 80% of my twitter feed is populated with tweets like this. Not from people I follow.

And this struggle to move to the TikTok quadrant will be felt by all incumbent social platforms.

Why Instagram Threads & Why Now (Hint: Moving into the TikTok quadrant for content)

This brings us to the big question why did Meta decide to release Threads right now?

The TikTok quadrant for written content is empty & a gold rush opportunity.

Meta realises that the TikTok quadrant for written content is a massive opportunity, and Twitter doesn’t really have an advantage but rather a big disadvantage moving into it.

This is where Threads can stake its claim.

By starting with a blank slate, users on Threads aren’t accustomed to seeing threads from users they follow, but rather they can discover great text content from anyone who writes it.

By bootstrapping their network off Instagram, they sort of tried to solve the chicken & egg problem of social platforms where you have followers right off the bat. But that will potentially hurt them long term since users will now expect to see threads from their Instagram social graph.

And your Insta friends are perhaps not great at writing stellar threads.

And while building threads I suppose they’ve forgotten one tenet : “Your social graph is different on every platform. The people you engage with on Instagram is different from the people you engage with on Twitter”.

The Dark Horse in the Race (Artifact) :

As ironical as it gets Threads biggest competitor may not be Twitter, but rather a new company started by the founders of Instagram (Kevin Systrom & Mike Kreiger) called Artifact.

Artifact is a mobile app, that uses an algorithmic feed to curate news and articles for you from millions of publications. And they build social engagement around these articles. You can have high-quality conversations with others around these articles.

Essentially they’ve got the TikTok recommendation algorithm for publications and written content.

Artifact clearly wants to operate in the TikTok quadrant for written content. But it’s starting from the HackerNews quadrant with an algorithmic feed and making its way to the TikTok Quadrant.

But by starting out by organizing the feed around publications and high quality articles, they prevent the mucky content that will be created by your Instagram graph on Threads.

Therefore you’ll build an entirely new social graph as opposed to what you have on any other platform.

My bet to win in the TikTok quadrant for written content is Artificat. What is yours ?